How a Bronze Ox Becomes a Table

Start with the legs. On the Cow-and-Tiger Bronze Table, the large ox stands on four feet that also support the object. Its back sinks into a tray-like surface. Beneath the belly is an open space crossed by a smaller animal. What looks first like sculpture is also an arrangement of supports, surfaces and gaps.

The bronze was excavated from Tomb 24 at Lijiashan in Jiangchuan and is held by the Yunnan Provincial Museum. A museum-derived description dates it to the Warring States period. It measures roughly seventy-six centimetres in length and forty-three in height: substantial enough for its construction to be read as a whole, yet small enough for its details to remain close to the viewer.

The construction description supplied by the Lijiashan museum identifies separate casting followed by joining. That sequence gives the finished outline another dimension. Before there could be a single group of animals, there had to be components whose shapes and connections worked together.

The small ox is especially useful to the eye. Its position across the lower opening can be compared with the larger body above it. At the rear, the tiger reaches onto the ox. Each animal must be clear enough to recognise while belonging to a compact, stable arrangement. The sculpture makes movement visible without allowing the whole to lose its balance.

The object has also entered the streets of Kunming at a different scale. A January 2026 account places a large sculpture of the table at the junction of Dongfeng West Road and Wuyi Road. The original, held by the provincial museum, is about seventy-six centimetres long. Between the street enlargement and the museum object, the same silhouette serves different encounters: a city landmark at one scale, the relationship of cast components at the other.

Its form also distinguishes it from a cowrie container. A tray carried by animal legs is different from a vessel with an enclosed body and lid. Reading the shape before giving it a name brings the maker’s decisions back into view. The remarkable thing is the way several animals have become the architecture of a table.